The third Book Sprint in the series of Understanding Power Projects is underway in Cape Town. Sixteen experts from South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ivory Coast, USA, UK, and Seychelles write a handbook on Power Project Procurement. As in the last two Book Sprints on Power Project Purchase and Power Project Financing, there are heated negotiations between the participants, followed by writing and rewriting. The beautiful location and the plentiful food helps to keep the group in work mode from early morning till late at night. See more photos here on flickr. Like and help us promote this...

After four long days we finished the book „Lost in Führung“ with Die Akademie für Führungskräfte der Wirtschaft. The first day was mainly focused on discussions of the concept, scope, and structure of the book. On the second day, the ten participants wrote the first chapters, while editing and revising simultaneously. Then they became really productive by day three, more than doubling the content written. To keep up with editing those new text passages, the last two days were a sprint within a sprint. Some chapters had seen major work and were revised one last time, some examples and tools didn’t make the cut, last images had to be inserted. And then we had a book! Seclusion versus connectivity A real challenge in the monastery was the internet connection, since we work mostly on our online collaborative writing platform PubSweet. Many places in rural German still don’t have broadband networks, despite all political promises. When it comes to digitalization, Germany ranks on 17th place among 63 industrialized countries, according to The “World Competitive Ranking” from the IMD Business School in Lausanne. Was braucht man für ein #AkademieBooksprint ? Kluge Köpfe, Gelassenheit, Mut, Neugier, 1 guten Ort, Vertrauen.@Die_Akademie_de @booksprint pic.twitter.com/CaguTgBzUw — Christin Latk (@chl2011) August 9, 2017 And then the monastery walls, build 700 years ago, were thick enough to allow phone reception only on the window sills of the outer walls. A great and beautiful place for a retreat, with impressive baroque architecture and surrounding sunflower fields. These kind of places are ideal for the deep concentration of a Book Sprint, and there are ways to deal with slow or now connectivity. Had I known about the...

Last week we heard the sad news that free culture activist Bassel Safadi, imprisoned in 2013 in Syria and taken from prison in 2015, had been executed. ‘They Can't Stop Us’ — World Mourns Execution of Palestinian-Syrian Activist Bassel Khartabil Safadi by the Assad Regime We have worked with Bassel in the past, without getting to know him directly. Book Sprints founder Adam Hyde wrote in his blog: Bassel Safadi 4am in San Francisco, a quiet street outside. I couldn’t sleep. The world seems a little mad with hyperbolic talk of fire and fury. So, now I’m awake with a few moments to think about things that don’t get out in the light of day. One of them being what happened to Bassel Safadi. Bassel was someone I worked with once on a Book Sprint. I didn’t know him, but he is a good friends of friends of mine. I had this fleeting picture of him ‘just being one of the crew’ in the most normal sense. He wasn’t anyone I connected directly with, he was participating remotely in the event. His buddies were in Berlin with me and Bassel was ‘just there’ somewhere in the ether. Present, friendly, friend of friends. Months later my buddies said he was imprisoned in Syria. It is at this point I paused to learn more about him. Imprisoned in Syria? What? What did he do? It was an event that stuck out angular, jutting, and severe in my otherwise comfortable world. Its then that I learned just how normal Bassel was. He was just this guy. He did some activist stuff in the area...

Behind the thick walls of a baroque abbey in southern Germany, Die Akademie für Führungskräfte is booksprinting. Here, team members developing the Akademie’s model of leadership and Akademie’s trainers write a book on leadership in the 21st century. The abbey is located on a hill with a view on the surrounding valleys. Warm sunshine during the day and dramatic rainbows in the evening were the background of the smoking brains and deep discussions. See more photos of the Book Sprint here and follow it on twitter under #akademiebooksprint. Like and help us promote this...

Brigitta Wurnig arrived at the Book Sprint venue near Hamburg full of high expectations and excited for what was about to start. She had organized the Book Sprint with a group of fellow business coaches and managers of large German corporations to think about Digital Leadership. The first day full of discussions about the book’s topic, scope, and possible structure went really well. Then things started getting tough. We started totally enthusiastic, and then we went through our little crisis on the second day. The first evening and all of the second day, the eight participants wrote most of the chapters, and started revising other chapters. The group sat together to discuss what restructuring, re-writing and re-formulating needed to be done, which redundancies eliminated and what gaps to be filled. By the end of day two, it seemed almost impossible to the group to pull through and get the book they wanted at the end. This is how Brigitta tells the story: Time was of the essence in what was just a 3-day Book Sprint, or essentially a 2,5-day Book Sprint cut short by many participants leaving in the afternoon of the last day. And there was still so much to do! Some of them were almost ready to give up, but everyone managed to maintain their good humor and high spirits. As the facilitator, I tried to pass on my confidence stemming from all former Book Sprints, knowing that there is always this point somewhere in the middle when the task suddenly seems impossible. And yet every time we work through the anxiety and come out at the other end with – surprise,...